Integrated plastic injection mold and blow mold machines are widely available for commercial use. Such machines allow manufacture of containers using injection mold techniques to form multiple parisons at a first station, and transport the parisons to a second station for blow mold processing into containers. The containers can then be moved to a third station for release from the machine to further processing. For example, machines such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,941,816 to Aoki, U.S. Pat. No. 5,253,999 to Kosuge, or U.S. Pat. No. 5,080,574 to Koga et al., the disclosures of which are herein incorporated by reference.
However, as those skilled in the art will appreciate, an economic use of such integrated plastic injection mold and blow mold machines requires a high rate of production of formed containers. To achieve a high rate of production the residence times of plastic material at each station must be minimized, as does the time required for transfer of plastic material between stations. What is needed is an apparatus that reduces the residence time of the molded parisons in the injection station yet satisfactorily modifies the temperature of the molded parisons to that suitable for transfer to the blow mold assembly.